July 12: Op-Ed: Sunday July 5 a passing driver reported what looked like a crashed vehicle to police in Scotland. Three days later, following a call by another motorist, police investigated. They found the crashed car and John Yuill, 28, father-of-three, dead at the scene; his partner, mother-of-two Lamara Bell, 25, was critically injured.

Today Sunday July 12 Ms Bell died at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital in Glasgow.

She had been placed in a medically induced coma eariler this week; she sustained a head injury and broken bones in the crash but had also suffered kidney damage due to dehydration caused by lying in the car for more than 72 hours.

An urgent review of police Scotland call handling procedures will now take place.

The initial call to police on the morning of the accident was not logged on police systems.

If police had responded to that first call could both Mr Yuill and Ms Bell have been saved?

If he died instantly in the crash how conscious was Ms Bell; the various possible scenarios do not bear thinking about.

According to the Guardian "Scotland’s justice secretary, Michael Matheson, said that he had formally directed Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) to undertake a “thorough and speedy” review of all police call handling. The head of Police Scotland, Chief Constable Sir Stephen House, described the catastrophic error as the result of “individual failure” in a statement on Friday in which he publicly apologised to both families."

That apology however does not bring the dead couple back.

Police Scotland have been heavily criticised this week. The police force involved was centralised in 2013 which no doubt means it was trimmed to save money.

The investigation will now try to determine what went wrong. Is the centralised service working effectively or not? Were there individual failings in this case?

Chief Constable Stephen House maintains that Police Scotland’s error was down to ‘individual failure’. That assumption will now come under intense scrutiny.

The family of the dead couple deserve answers and if fault is found justice should be served.

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